Stories from the shores of the Kandulim, on the Murtuane (Alienor system)
So the Story goes...
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He’d been considering disengagement today… not sure if it was what he really wanted. But the thought was coming at times. He wasn’t sure that it wasn’t triggered by some kind of desperation or sadness, an automatic response of protection or to stop the suffering.
Well he was just considering. He hadn’t made his choice yet.
He was lying on a raft, floating on an even ocean.
No wind.
A dim light. There was no cloud. There was no sun. Just a dim light. No particular color or shade, the only difference was between this light and the ocean.
No wave…
So still was the water.
The raft was floating for days… The only choices seemed to stay on the raft forever or to dive into the stillness of the ocean.The raft was comfortable because he knew it so well. So many years floating.
Now he was pondering about this other choice.
Diving into the ocean.
Would he float on the surface?
Would he sink?Would he be able to breathe?
No rush though… it was just the beginning of his wonderment.
He was so well lying on the raft. No sensation from the contact of his body to the raft. He couldn’t remember the last time he changed his position.
Did he move? It was so still.
Was he even breathing…Aglaë had been looking at the odd shape floating over the surface, mistaking it at first for the strange dead body of a creature of the lands.
But it was not, she could feel life on it, ever so light.She knew the rules of her kind, and she shouldn’t be seen… She had been venturing already too close from the tabooed surface, her sisters would have told her.
But curiosity was great… irrepressible…
He decided to give its chance to the water.
He sat and just let himself fall into the apparent darkness.Aglaë had been reluctantly coming back to the games of her sisters, when Thalÿs, the eldest had come back from her trip.
She’d had trouble with one of her dolphins who had fallen ill, and had been seeking advice from one of the healers in another distant underwater city.Eufrosÿn, her other sister was listening to her account, and was amazed at the similarities between her sister’s depiction and her own recent dream imageries. But Aglaë, who was usually very fond of such bizarre coincidences, barely did more than a few silent nods.
Her mind was halfway here, and halfway there, with the mysterious life she had felt on the surface…
She wanted to come back, and a sudden impulse made her leave her sisters without an explanation and rush to her spot of observation.He was falling. At least that was his impression. Not floating, maybe because he’d expulsed all the air in his lungs.
He was feeling his attention fade out, like it was flying away from his body… or swimming away in that watery environment.It wasn’t cold. Maybe because he’d lost his sense of touch. Maybe his body was too numb for him to feel anything… Did he think about breathing? He didn’t remember how to tell his body to do it.
He was feeling good. He would think of breathing later if he remembered how to think.
Malika jotted down some notes on the chat window, depicting the images as they whizzed into her mind like the pages of a multicoloured flip-book
“As she swam swiftly to regain the spot of her observation, she skimmed almost to the surface, and as she did, she saw lights. She surfaced and heard sounds that resembled the music that she and her sisters played.
They held in their hands objects that projected sounds…”
As she swam swiftly to regain the spot of her observation, she skimmed almost to the surface, and as she did, she saw lights. She surfaced and heard sounds that resembled the music that she and her sisters played.
They held in their hands objects that projected sounds, and their echoes in the waters were projecting harmonious symphonies that were carried miles across the waters.How odd that the sounds where so similar to the ones she had always known. But they were different, rasher, suffused of a violent nature which was so alien to the world she was coming from. It all was perplexing, and almost deafening to her. Her eyes getting slowly accustomed to the light could not yet perceive that there was no longer the life she’d felt on the strange floating body, but she knew it assuredly even without seeing it.
She plunged back into the waters, to reattain the gliding peace and softness that she had been missing so much already, even though she had been out of it for barely a few moments.
Where was the life she had felt… Gone in the strange world of the surface? She knew so little of that world, that she imagined that all their creatures could swim as easily in the airs as she could do in the waters. Was there a bottom to their environment?
All of these questions were erupting and expanding in her mind, when a sudden feeling got her forthwith.She could feel him. Sinking slowly… and she could feel his pain inside, something else that was alien to her… He was so fascinating…
She swam fleetly to where he was.
She turned in small rounds around him, following closely his descent, not daring to touch him.
So alien, yet so beautiful.She could communicate with him, as he was in something close to a deep slumber, and allowing for that exchange to happen. It was a breach of the rules, she knew.
She had been told not to interfere with things from the surface, yet she was interfering already, and she’d always been doing it in a sense… At what point did that breach leapt from her imagination to reality? She couldn’t say…The light was casting a yellow radiance in the blue waters. A feeling of warmth and comfort surrounding them.
He was telling her he was dying, yet he was comfortable. Time meant nothing…
She conveyed to him that she could help him, bring him back to his floating station, where he could spring back into his world… She wanted to share so many things with him…He woke up on a beach of purple sand.
All he could remember was a soft voice whispering in his ears.
Purple sand, was it the Kandulim?What did happen? He couldn’t remember who he was…
How could he remember the Kandulim?As he layed on the purple sand, she placed one hand on her heart and her other hand on his heart. She closed her eyes and began to sing.
A golden hue began to emanate, with touches of pale emerald green. With her touch she relayed in energy, that she would assist him to fully awaken.
She would do this, with the pure love she contained within her heart. For she knew no different.
She was about to embark upon a journey, that she knew would take her away from her existing family. Momentarily.
She also knew, that all was well, as she would bridge the two worlds together.
Her father would be furious, but her heart would win him over. She knew this
As he slept, she went for a much required swim.
She had to find a way, to stay on the surface longer, without such discomfort.
Not being in the water, had her feeling so dry, all over, including her throat.
She swam and swam, swirled around, and then, she heard her father calling her name………………He did recall his name in a dream. Jarvis.
A strange dream actually.
There was that woman… whose name he couldn’t recall though.
Her face was beautiful but he hadn’t felt any sexual attraction toward her… it was different, like he knew her.
Well, with his memory loss, he possibly knew her, someone close assuredly.
She was asking questions about this land he had beached on… and in the dream it appeared he knew many details, again that he couldn’t recall now he was awake.
It was more like a legend, not facts.
But now it was quite real to him.
It’s been 2 days since he opened his eyes on this purple beach, and he’s been busy collecting driftwood to make a fire. He didn’t dare venture into the forest, and if the legends about the inhabitants of Kandulim were true, he wasn’t welcome here.Wow he was feeling dizzy. His head was pounding repeatedly like one of the vangor drums. He dropped the twigs he had collected on the sand and took his head in his hands. The pounding was so loud that he began crying.
A flash, a soft feminine face surrounded by a fiery red hair and blue liquid eyes. She was smiling at him.
The pounding ceased at once, and he just had the time to see a movement in the forest. All was still now. His mind would suggest it was a hallucination fostered by that head ache… if his thoughts weren’t so scattered.Who was in that vision? Who was in the forest?
Was it the woman in his dream?He began to recall the strange vision he had before awakening on this beach.
Back in the depths of the water, Aglaë was thinking of a way for her to move easily on the other world.
There was a legend of her people, a legend which was told to the children. It promised pain and an accursed half-life to those trying to disown their heritage, and live outside of the life-sustaining element of water.
For most of the children, such an idea was incongruous at best, and none would have thought of breaching the taboo simply to try something different and potentially lethal.
But to Aglaë, all that it meant now was that such a thing was possible.
In that legend she had been told when she was young, there was a prince, who betrayed his people, and was condemned to an exile outside of the oceans. So that he would not die an immediate and atrocious death on the dry surface, but rather suffer even more, by not being able to come back to the depths, he was given a mixture of plants to ingest. A deadly algae which grew in the cemeteries of the Holders of Dreams, on the carcasses of the Wise Ones, mixed with an herb from the lands.Aglaë did not know how and where to gather the plants… She was hesitant to do such a thing, for it would surely infuriate her father… But she was willing to do it. She would have to find a naïve ally to help her in her task, because she was seeing her half-brother Pelorus becoming suspicious and she did not want to have him discover her plans before she could realise them.
Pelorus was very close to their father, who had made him Captain of the Tritonic Guard. Though he was not having a slithery serpentine tail like her own, he was very agile and swift in the waters with his tentacles, and was very respected, as he had a reassuring presence, radiating might and power.
